


Better

by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)



Series: The K.J. Poetry Series [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspective Nonsense, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 02:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8384353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/pseuds/Inaccessible%20Rail
Summary: “Words make us vulnerable, and so when she would watch Killian pulling an aged piece of parchment from the pocket of his coat, from the drawer of their night stand; when she would catch Henry slipping a slim paperback into his hands, she understood the subversion. But she still wanted to know.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> While this whole series is generally focused on Killian, I’ve decided to devote a chapter to Emma’s perspective. Poetry is still involved, and Killian Jones is very much still involved, but this is all coming from her. I believe this poem is untitled, but the author’s name is Christopher Poindexter. You can read the full poem [here](https://www.instagram.com/p/BGhQBQDTNV8/). Bolded text below comes directly from the poem in question.
> 
> Edit: I should also note that some other unquestionably fantastic CS fan on Tumblr (whose name I do not know) made a graphic with this poem on it _before_ I wrote this. So just know that I am not the first person to be inspired by this particular poem for these two.

Emma had never thought of herself as a particularly romantic person. And she had never aligned herself with especially romantic partners until Killian. Sometimes she had to laugh at the strange path of men she seemed to tread, from Neal, to Walsh, to Killian. Walsh had tried proposing with a ring in her dessert, and even though he had ended up being nothing but a footnote in her romantic history, the gesture had remained; a disingenuous ringing in her ears that she hadn’t actually found romantic at all. And a public proposal? Way to force the issue, Walsh.

No, Killian was, by far, the most genuinely romantic man she had ever allowed herself to love, and while at first she had been overwhelmed by this “condition,” now she couldn’t help but be charmed by it.

She knew she was _really_ in for a treat when she discovered the poetry thing. It wasn’t as if he was keeping it a secret, necessarily, he just wasn’t totally open about it at first, and she could understand that. Listening to Henry talk about his writing and her, the proud mother, asking, could she maybe read it? And Henry blushing and coughing and saying, “Maybe when it’s done.” Words make us vulnerable, and so when she would watch Killian pulling an aged piece of parchment from the pocket of his coat, from the drawer of their night stand; when she would catch Henry slipping a slim paperback into his hands, she understood the subversion.

But she still wanted to know.

…

There had been a night of stormy weather. A night of stormy weather in early fall that prophesied the harsher temperatures to come, the slick roads and flushed cheeks, and she had suggested a night in. A night to finish off that bottle of rum she’d found at a distillery a few miles outside of town, a night to themselves, a night to pull on the wool socks and pull Granny’s knitted blankets from the hall closet.

“I know you might be afraid to tell me,” she starts softly, “but I’d love to know.”

They’re curled up against the headboard of their large bed, the most luxurious item she’s ever purchased for herself, and their toes don’t even reach the end of it when they lay flat and long against one another. And it’s a bit absurd but she loves it, she loves the ridiculous, “princess and the pea” quality to her large, fluffy bed that makes her feel like she’s floating on a cloud and she _will not feel guilty about it_.

They’re tipsy enough that she’s gathered the courage to finally ask. There’s even a lingering note of laughter to her voice, their mutual chuckles subsiding about something her father had said to her mother (and he’s probably sleeping on the couch tonight), and he’s still smiling but his eyes glaze over a bit, and for a moment, one brief moment, she’s afraid she’s overstepped.

But he calms her, as he always has, always will. He smiles again, and turning slightly to the drawer of the nightstand on his side of the bed, he retrieves that same, familiar parchment. Folded over, and over, and over again until it’s the size of a small square. She can smell it as he offers it to her, the slightly moldy paper, that “forgotten in the attic” kind of smell. The way that most of the books in the prison library had smelled. Forgotten but important, permanent, willing to stick around and age and wait to be read.

She holds it gently between her fingers, opening and unfolding, gently so as not to tear those creases that _barely_ hold the thing together anymore. And she reads it in silence, this poem by Yeats that she vaguely remembers having read before, on an ordinary day, so many years ago now, her belly swollen with the child she would have to give up. Her eyes passing over the words but not really comprehending them.

And it’s so unbearably _tame_ , this “secret” that he’s been keeping. And it comes as absolutely no surprise that the man has a predilection for poetry, this pirate, this romantic juggernaut of a man that she cannot believe is even her type but for all his harshness it is the soft parts that she has found herself lost in more times than she can count. She loves that harshness, admires it, has been overwhelmed by it, but the soft parts make her heart swell to a size she hadn’t even known was possible, and now she has just one more thing to add to the growing list of things she loves about Killian Jones.

“You _would_ have a thing for poetry,” she says, smiling at his flushed cheeks. She refolds it, carefully, reverently, placing it on the bedside table next to a candle that’s burning low. The wind blows the rain hard against their bedroom window and she climbs into his lap beneath the heavy warmth of their blankets.

…

Her romance quota is too low. She watches her parents, everyday, more in love then the day they were before; scrambling for gifts and gestures and words, and all she can do is utter an “I love you” in that sweet, sweet space between Killian’s lips. And even now, after so many utterances, her heart will still skip a beat; her palms may even start to _sweat_. As if a small part of her is still afraid to admit it, afraid that he’ll leave, that she’ll leave, that they’ll lose this life they’ve only just begun to build together. Sometimes she wonders if it will ever go away, if she’ll ever want it to, and a few years down the line she’ll be admiring the blue of her daughter’s eyes and wonder how she could have ever _doubted_ it.

But for now she doubts. She loves, she loves as much as she can, but she still worries that it’s not enough for him.

And it doesn’t help that the man shows not even the slightest inkling of shame for the love he has for her. Her cup runneth over with gestures, and she loves each and every one for their many subtleties. There are so many she’s had to create a spreadsheet in her head of all the different kinds; those brief domestic interludes that she’s begun to suspect come as natural to him as breathing. The fresh, home-cooked meals that are waiting for her at the end of a long day, the flowers (buttercups, small, delicate things that she’s decided to grow herself) left on his pillow when he wakes before her, hot chocolate waiting downstairs on a low flame so it’s still warm when she finally treks downstairs.

Almost always they’re quiet, they rarely take her by surprise, and she appreciates the steadiness of his love for her. How, most of the time, it never makes her anxious, never asks for more than she is willing to give, even though she is _desperate_ for him to feel that in return. She wishes he could have housed half her heart if only for a moment of brief understanding. That it is full, and it doesn’t need to want so much as it used to; it likes Sunday night dinners at the loft and fleeting, rainy Monday mornings filled with bare flesh and soft sighs.

But, as he is so keen to point out, her heart, in its entirety, rests safely within her chest (and he prefers it that way). She deserves nothing less than her whole heart and he intends to guard her and it until his bones turn to dust beneath his skin. And so the question persists: How to let him know?

…

She knows that Henry has a better sense of these kinds of things, but he’s distracted these days; lost in a haze of teenage girls and English papers and living, breathing fairy tales silently craving his approval. She _could_ ask Henry for a direction, an author, a time period; she knows this, that he would be more than happy to help, but she also knows the shyness in Killian’s blush, the stuttering of Henry’s voice when she asks if he’ll let her have a look at his work. So, no, she won’t ask. She’ll do it herself.

The Internet is a black hole of unreadable poetry from every corner of the planet and _maybe_ she should have asked for help. Every morning since Killian’s drunken “confession” she takes her laptop and mug of hot chocolate out onto the wraparound porch and she looks, she Googles, she jumps from blog, to blog, to blog, and it’s never _right_. It’s too tragic or too sappy and she just can’t disappoint the man with all those thoughtful gestures that make her chest tight.

**where did you come from, human?**

When she finally does stumble upon it, she imagines that it has echoed between them since their very first meeting. Since missteps down the rabbit hole, piles of corpses and conniving witches who make terrible mothers. Beanstalks and deception, flirtation and hospital rooms and farmhouses and just _one more_ portal, and she just _needs him to know_.

She knows, and he knows, that she’s not a romantic in the traditional sense. The few times she tried to make him breakfast she had either over or undercooked the meal, failed to get it done before he woke, and almost always stole the (burnt) bacon off of his plate regardless. She still gets a kiss though, a smile, a twisting of her hair around his fingers and she can _just barely_ hold a grudge. She fears she might be losing her edge.

**you are not the bones or the  
** **laughter or the strangeness**  
**i ordered.**

He came without warning, no notice, and no way to prepare. Like a new foster home with new parents, a new school and new friends and no way of knowing when this day might be your last. All that time living a life she didn’t want and she thought she _knew_ what she needed to be happy. That was before.

**you do not consist of  
** **the madness i so desperately and**  
**achingly long for.**

Before she dropped out of school and met Neal, before she completely gave up on the idea of having a normal life, she had to read _Wuthering Heights_ in an English class full of apathetic students who could barely muster the energy to show up to class in the morning. But she had cared more than she thought possible, so invested in the lives of Heathcliff and Cathy and the wind upon the moors that she had slept with the damn thing underneath her pillow, and this was what she thought she _ached_ for. Even when she finally gave up, packed up her meager belongings and hit the road, it was what she thought her heart _demanded_. So full of want for all the things she could not have, and it hurt, but maybe it was supposed to.

**you are tender and sweet and as  
**   
**soft and lovely as a bouquet of clouds,  
** **you are more soul than body,**  
**more grace than bones,**  
**more heart than lust.**

Killian was right to be afraid. The words were hers enough; true authorship mattered little when the words rang this true. But she felt Henry’s fear all the same, the fear of the author, and when she slipped the folded piece of tacky stationary into the pocket of his leather jacket draped over the back of a chair in the kitchen, her heart felt like an exposed nerve. She fled for work without saying their usual goodbyes and the wind blew colder that day.

**but, you are not, what i wanted.  
**

**which analogy or metaphor  
** **or word should i give you**  
**with tears in my eyes to tell you**  
**something that is as simple as the**  
**moon is bright;**

She doesn’t hear from him all day and by the time the sun starts to set David is about to throw her out the door with all her fidgeting and errant magic. Two light bulbs later he sends her home for the night with a cup of herbal tea and a not so subtle command that she _relax_. She wants to laugh outright at the suggestion, relaxing on a day like today; a day more frightening then every “I love you” combined, then the first time he sees you without your armor and you’re used to keening in the dark but he leaves the curtains open just enough that the moonlight falls soft against your skin and the light isn’t as harsh as you might have thought. She makes for the docks.

…

It’s dark when she arrives and the wind coming off the water tells her that there will undoubtedly be a frost in the morning. At first glance he’s nowhere to be found and all she wants is to curl miserably into herself, to travel back just a few short hours and stop her traitorous fingers from leaving that note for him to find.

“You are truly a marvel, Swan.”

Turning around feels like the absolute last thing she wants to do but she can sense him at her back, warm and hovering, and all her heart wants at this moment is to fall into his arms and cease to ache, but the moment is far too fragile, the nerve still exposed and with the chill in the air she only clutches her jacket tighter.

“I don’t know about that,” she answers, her voice barely a whisper on the breeze but he is close enough to hear, his lips resting against her ear, hand and hook just barely sneaking around her waist.

**“‘You are not the woman I wished for,’”** he recites softly, and she finally feels the heaviness of the day in the sudden weight of her eyelids as they drop shut against the delicious timbre of his voice.  
  
 **you are not what i wanted.**  
**you, are better.**


End file.
